The Justice Factory

Book excerpt: Spend time at the International Criminal Court, and you will hear the familiar language of anti-impunity. Spend longer, and you will encounter the less familiar language of management – efficiency, risk, and performance, and tools of strategic planning, audit, and performance appraisal. How have these two languages fused within the primary institution of global justice? This book explores that question through an historical and conceptually layered account of management's effects on the ICC's global justice project. It historicises management, forcing international lawyers to look at the sites of struggle – from the plantation to the United Nations – that have shaped the court's managerial present. It traces the court's macro, micro and meso scales of management, showing how such practices have fashioned a vision of global justice at organisational, professional, and argumentative levels. And it asks how those who care about global justice might engage with managerial justice at an institution animated by forms, reforms, and the promise of optimisation.